


Cycles

by taichara



Category: Final Fantasy
Genre: Drabble Collection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 04:40:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9419153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taichara/pseuds/taichara
Summary: Five drabbles for Final Fantasy.





	1. Glass Razor

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Monthly Challenge Super Go!](http://monthlysupergo.dreamwidth.org), January /17 -- prompt table, "elements".

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Venya, and how a red mage fights.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _prompt:_ "air/wind"

Faster, faster --

Til the very wind whistled around him with the speed of his strikes --

Venya whirled and lunged, stabbed and parried, through dust kicked up by the heels of his boots, so fast did he cross the ragged training circle marked out behind the inn's stable. He worked through the forms swiftly enough that Kythi fancied he could see the red mage's imaginary opponent.

It wasn't enough to be able to hit. Venya needed to draw blood and be away before that opponent -- be it beast, man or more dreadful thing -- could counterstrike.

A fragile sort of deadliness, this.


	2. Fertile Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, it's the small things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _prompt:_ "earth"

Blood. He hated it -- hated seeing it splashed all over his friends, hated the misery it always heralded. Blood, and death, and misery. Maybe that was a stereotype, sure, but that didn't stop Lyr from hating it all anyway.

Worse was when it was all embodied in one shambling, rotting corpse. 

The dead belonged in the ground, damn it all.

But, as they staggered from the Shrine -- Kythi straining from exhaustion and Lyan's weight, Venya half-blinded and needing guidance -- Lyr saw, through matted crimson hair, a lone blossom pushing up through the soil.

Life, renewing already.

It _was_ worth it.


	3. Burning Both Ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyan, research, and grumbling thereof.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _prompt:_ "fire"

_Ugh. What possible reason is there for being in such a damned hurry anyway._

But hurry it was, whether Lyan liked it or not. So here he sat in the flicker of a handful of candles, poring over grimoires bought with blood money to stuff incantations into his skull as quickly as he could. 

Lyr'd gotten off lucky, and Venya even moreso. Just the one spell apiece for them this time. But oh no, _he_ had to be a walking magical ballista for them all. Feh.

Lyan scratched his scalp through tow-coloured thatch, and turned another page.

_Just one more._


	4. Washing Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kythi carries the marks more than the others, in more ways than one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _prompt:_ "water"

"More of your hair's gone white, you know."

Kythi shook brook water out of the mottled mane in question, shooting Lyr a questioning glance over one bare shoulder. Just why the white mage followed him to the brook in the first place, he had no idea. Whatever.

"So I'll wind up looking more like Venya, less like you. S'not hurting anything, I feel fine."

... Ignoring the new scars striping his hide. 

Lyr rolled his eyes, waited for Kythi to wade to the shore. The fighter's crystal pendant -- the only stitch on him -- glinted wetly in the sun, and Lyr wondered ...


	5. Resolve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's no time to hesitate now. Or the world ends forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _prompt:_ "spirit"

Before them loomed Chaos, claws and wings and implacable fury, thunderous anger that echoed with the memory of a fallen knight.

Behind them lay -- nothing, save the promise of a yawning void that would devour all things.

To save the world, to _change_ the world, they needed to stop him and needed to do it _now ..._

To lose meant losing everything. To win meant, perhaps, losing themselves. An entire history of the world, lost to time that never happened.

It was a sacrifice worth making.

Four glittering shards flared brightly. Four voices rose in defiance.

This _would_ be the end --


End file.
